Should old acquaintance be forget and never brought to mind?

I think that’s how the line goes from the song Old Lang Syne. I would certainly answer a resounding NO. I had a delightful evening last night with some old acquaintances who are actually old (literally and figuratively for all of us now) college fraternity brothers. Both were also in my wedding, some 43 years ago, now.

Like many, I left college and never looked back. In my case the Army had something to do with that. It was the Viet Nam era and I had to go in to avoid being drafted. I went through Officer Candidate School and was commissioned and sent to Iran of all places. When I called my new bride, Carolyn, I told her; “Remember how you promised to follow me to the ends of the earth, well I think I found one of the ends.”

We actually had a fairly reasonable life in Iran. I ran the Armed Forces Radio and TV station and we had our son over there. My next assignment in Viet Nam was not nearly so nice. In any event, our travels and the normal stuff of life got in the way of keeping in touch with most of my friends and acquaintances from my college days.

It wasn’t until 20-30 years later that we reestablished some contact. For the past few years we try to get together whenever Floyd Parks, who was my pledge son in college comes over from England, where he ended up living, with his wife Carole. Another fraternity brother and classmate of Floyd’s, Tom Flanders and his wife Lois, live in the Chicago area and acts as host for these affairs. Tom and Lois have been very generous and gracious hosts and have done a great job of making everyone feel at home in their home.

It was fun the first time just catching up and discussion the lives that we all had lived, our families, the careers, now mostly over for us all (except of course for my new real estate career), and all of the water that has followed under our collective bridges. Now when we meet it is more about our lives now and just relaxing and enjoying being together again. It is amazing how easy it is to fallback into the friendships that we enjoyed back in our college days. It’s not the same, heaven help us if it was; but it’s still fun to talk and laugh and just enjoy getting together. I look forward to these visits every year or two.

So maybe I’d have written the song that old acquaintance should be remembered and oft brought to mind. I hope to see a few more faces from my distant past on this trip and visit. We’re still trying to locate 1-2 people from our wedding – my fraternity brothers made up most of the grooms side of the wedding party – and convince them to join us on a future get together. So, Steve Yaw, Joel Hartman, Jim Hatch or Dick Barton, if you’re out there and read this, shoot me an email and we’ll include you in the next visit. We'd love to see you, too.